


Two to Tangle

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Anyone can learn to dance with the proper MOTIVATION, Dance fighting, M/M, Skwisgaar couldn't make it because that wasn't his soy ice cream, Sometimes motivation comes in the form of bjs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26957404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: “I’m not going to a fucking dance,” Nathan had said. “I don’t dance,” he’d added. “I don’t fucking knowhowto dance,” he’d admitted as an absolute last resort.But it was a hoop the label was making them jump through, and Charles was very firm on the point that everyoneelsewas going, and everyone else would make some attempt at dancing. No amount of protesting that they were only going for the booze and to feel up chicks would move him.
Relationships: Nathan Explosion/Charles Foster Offdensen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kloktober 2020 day 11 prompt, "Dancing or fighting." 
> 
> I’m back on my “both” bullshit.

“I’m not going to a fucking dance,” Nathan had said. “I don’t dance,” he’d added. “I don’t fucking know _how_ to dance,” he’d admitted as a last resort. 

But it was a hoop the label was making them jump through, and Charles was very firm on the point that everyone _else_ was going, and everyone _else_ would make some attempt at dancing. No amount of protesting that they were only going for the booze and to feel up chicks would move him. 

“Why aren’t _you_ going for those reasons?” Charles had asked. 

And Nathan had grumbled and sulked, and refused to admit out loud that it was because when he did any sort of dancing anywhere besides a mosh pit, things ended up broken. (To be fair, this happened in mosh pits too, but at least everyone there knew exactly what they were signing up for.) It wasn’t as though Nathan was a stranger to being yelled at for breaking things, but he had a bitter streak about being yelled at when he _knew_ it would happen but no one would let him _avoid it._

So that was how he’d ended up scheduled for fucking dancing lessons. He headed to the second lesson—he’d skipped the first once on principal, because fuck you Offdensen—thinking that maybe if he broke the instructor’s foot or leg or something then maybe Charles would reconsider. He might not even have to try; people had been pointing out that he was a bull in a china shop ever since his high school growth spurt. 

Nathan pushed the double doors open with both hands so they hit the walls with a bang, stomped into the room he’d been told to report to, and came to an abrupt halt. 

First of all, since when had they had a fucking ballroom in Mordhaus? Had that always been there? And second, why was the room’s only other occupant Charles?

“Oh fuck me,” Nathan grumbled under his breath. 

His manager clearly heard him, and took the profanity in stride. “We’ve got an important event coming up, Nathan. Do you really think I’d leave your dance instruction up to just anyone?”

“Well . . . yeah. You’re fucking busy all the time, why not just hire some fancy-ass dancing guru to teach me?”

“Because I have a better chance than most of leaving this room still able to walk. Take off your boots, please, and I’ve brought an extra pair of socks if you need them.”

Nathan kicked his boots off at the nearest wall, where they at least made a very satisfying set of thuds. “Can’t believe my fucking manager is gonna teach me how to fucking dance in fucking socks.”

He had, in fact, been wearing his boots barefoot. Charles stared at him expectantly until he put the offered pair of socks on. At least they were black. 

“So, uh. Which one of us has to be the girl?”

Charles shot him a look that said, _You know better than to put it like that._ They’d had a similar conversation in a very different context in the not so distant past, ending with Charles making the very _firm_ point that they were both quite definitely men and putting it in any other terms was really just a waste of time. The fact that that they now slept in the same bed as often as not was a significant part of why Nathan hadn’t just blown these lessons off entirely. 

“We’ll start without music for now.” It was hard to associate the word _prowl_ with someone wearing a suit and tie and the demeanor of an administrator running a board meeting, but that was what came to mind anyway as Charles paced around him, correcting his stance and tapping on his back to make him stand up straight. “You’ll lead, because that’s what you need to learn, but I’ll be guiding you through how.”

“Uh. Doesn’t that mean you’re leading me?”

“Not at all. I’ll just be, ah, nudging you in the right directions until you’ve got the basics down. Now, this—” Charles positioned Nathan’s right hand cupping his left shoulder blade, the left hand in his right out to the side “—is your dance frame. Back straight, shoulders back, stomach in, arms firm and steady and never drooping. Your partner does the same, and shouldn’t be closer to you than I am right now.”

“Uhhhh. . . . Yeah?” Nathan replied. Learning to dance wasn’t turning out to be so hard, at least while they weren’t moving. He looked down at their feet, then back up at Charles. “Okay.”

A small smile passed across Charles’ face, a crumb of genuine approval. “When you push, I move back. When you pull, I move forward. That’s leading. Take a step in any direction—yes, like that, good. You, ah, feel how easy it is to tell me where to go with your hands?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s how you tell me where to move, but the actual movement comes from your core. That’s why you stand with your back straight, shoulders back, and stomach in is so important. Now, for the first dance step. . . .”

Nathan listened, interested mostly in getting this over with but also, a little bit, in getting another crumb. 

So he tried, but actually trying to move around seemed to drive all the other stuff from his mind, and every time he heard _back straight, shoulders back, and stomach in_ again he ground his teeth a little harder. 

One moment he had noodle arms, so he fixed that—probably—but in the meantime he forgot to move his body before the step—whatever the fuck _that_ was supposed to mean—and stepped on Charles’ feet. 

Then he was gripping too hard yanking Charles around too much, but focusing on not doing that made his steps too hesitant, and Charles stepped on _his_ feet.

“Don’t look down, look at me,” Charles said for probably the tenth time, sounding as unflappable as ever. “You can do this.”

“I _can’t_ fucking do it,” Nathan growled back. His head was starting to hurt from all the teeth grinding, and anyway, he hadn’t wanted to fucking do this in the first place. He’d been _tricked._

“Yes, you can. Look, Nathan, I’m not coaching you to win Dancing With The Stars here, I just want you to feel more comfortable with the idea of having to dance. Let’s try it with music.” 

Charles fished a small remote out of one pocket and pressed a button. Speakers set into the walls and ceiling started piping out the opening of a Dethklok song that Nathan could barely recognize, it was playing at such a _reasonable volume_. Ugh. Metal music was supposed to rattle the fucking windows! It was clearly an attempt to appeal to his taste in music, rather than whatever the fuck regular jackoffs usually danced too, but the obviousness of it somehow made it even more annoying. 

The remote was pocketed again, but before Charles had a chance to say something inanely encouraging again, Nathan stomped down hard on his foot. 

Or where his foot had been. Charles stepped back just as quickly as Nathan stepped forward. He tried again; the same thing happened. Whatever move he made, the guy just went with it, and every failed attempt made him that much more determined to get the bastard. 

They’d made at least one haphazard lap around the room before Nathan realized they were sort of dancing. His feet found the beats automatically and it was a fast song, so the only way to keep going without falling over was to use what Charles had taught him. They hurt from all the stomping, but so did his abs, kind of—was that what Charles had meant by his core? Their eyes met and locked, some spark in Charles’ gaze catching on Nathan’s smoldering ill temper. 

Okay, fine. They were dancing. Probably not well, but whatever. That didn’t make him any less ready to throw down. 

Nathan pushed hard, trying to unbalance him, but instead of disengaging Charles kept hold of his left hand, swinging out and then spinning back in until his back was pressed against the full length of Nathan’s body. Then he spun back out and resumed his original position, gripping Nathan’s shoulder to keep _him_ from losing his balance. The small smile was back, wolfishly appreciative. Challenging. 

A moment later Charles kicked neatly out and Nathan, weight all on one foot at the time, felt that foot lose contact with the floor. _Well shit_ , he thought, and fell. 

Except he didn’t land as hard as he should have, because Charles caught an arm under him and crouched and managed to keep his upper body just short of the floor. 

“You want to mess with me again?” Charles asked over the music. He was clearly trying to keep his usual boring-robot-manager tone, but there was a hint of breathlessness from all the exertion there, and the spark was still in his eyes. 

“Fuck yeah,” Nathan growled, grabbing onto the back of Charles’ suit and rolling hard to flip him over. 

Mid roll, Charles got a hold of the front of Nathan’s shirt so his tailbone took most of the landing, but at least he didn’t crack his head on the floor. “Ah,” he barked reflexively on impact, twisting the shirt taut. “Where’d you learn that?”

“High school wrestling,” Nathan said, but he barely got the last word out before Charles’ mouth smashed into his. He wasn’t really sure how they’d gone from angry dancing around the room to Charles arching up insistently beneath him, but hell, no point in looking a gift fuck in the mouth. Before coming up for breath he was already reaching in between them grabbing for buttons and zippers, whichever and whoever’s he found first. “You like me on top, huh? Is that what you’re into?”

“I like it when you lead,” Charles confirmed, punctuating the statement with a jerk of his hips as Nathan managed to get his suit pants undone. 

This, at least, was a dance Nathan knew—though dealing with a belt was something he was still getting used to. Why the fuck did this guy wear belts? It just made things more difficult. He’d have to talk to his manager about that once this lesson was over, ha. In the meantime, he bit Charles’ lip until he drew out a moan and focused on getting to the point where he could take both of them in hand at once. 

* * *

“Scheriouchly, thisch isch gonna be aweschome,” Murderface insisted, herding Pickles and Toki down the hallway. “It’sch thisch great game I invented. I call it, _Fireball_.”

Pickles, who had been tasked with carrying the lighter fluid, looked tolerantly unconvinced. The joint in his free hand that he was still working on probably helped, in addition to being a serious hazard. “Dood, shouldn’t we be playin’ this outside since it’s got actual fire?”

“No! Thisch isch an indoor game, Picklesch!”

“Don’ts sounds right,” Toki said. 

“Well it isch! When Schkwishgaar catschesch up we’re going to play, and it’s _going_ to be _aweschome_.”

“Oh, he’s goings to bes a whiles. Grabsed the wrongs ice creams from the freezers earlier ands now he ams bad lack-toes ‘cause he forgots that pill whats he takes for taller ants. Why don’t we finds Nathans instead?”

“Becausche, I _told_ you, I can’t find him! Schkwishgaar is juscht going to have to get hisch schit together, that’sch all there isch to it!”

Pickles snickered. “That’s the exact prablem, his shit ain’t _together._ Get it?”

“I scheriouschly don’t know why I put up with thisch, my geniousch is waschted on you two. Ugh.” Murderface gave up on herding and stomped on ahead. As he’d explained multiple times, they need a big, wide open room for this game, with as little clutter as possible to make for more awesome scores. In one hand, he carried a metal bucket full of oven mitts and baseball gloves, for choice; in the other, he had a full plastic can of tennis balls. Since his hands were full, when he got to the ballroom double doors he just kicked them open so they hit the walls with a bang. 

“Oh, there ams Nathans!”

There was a pause, during which Nathan didn’t seem to notice their arrival and Pickles snickered and took another hit. “An’ look, there’s Offdensen with ‘im. Looks like they’re gettin’ pretty chummy there, huh Murderface?”

Murderface dropped everything he was carrying to hastily clap his hands over his face. “Oh god, my eyesch!!”

“Wowee, they’s making outs! But they ams both guys. . . . Waits, you can _do’s that?”_

“Yeah dood, it’s called ‘doin’ gay stuff.’ Heh, and they’re doing more’n just kissing, too.”

“Thisch isch juscht to gay for wordsch,” wailed Murderface. With that, he turned and ran, just barely avoiding slipping on one of the dropped balls. 

Pickles rolled his eyes. “Come on, Toki, let’s go outside.” He waggled his jug of lighter fluid. “I can think of a couple cool things to set on fire with this stuff, and then maybe we can do a barbecue.”

“With hankborgers and hots dogs?”

“ _Definitely_ with hot dogs.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for motivation to demonstrate learned skills through the cunning use of bathroom bjs. (Or: Charles shows Nathan he’s proud.)

Despite his continued protests, Nathan went to the fucking dance. 

At least there was more to do in the spacious ballroom venue than just dance. He got away with hanging out by the snack table for a while, and when he caught his manager giving him a meaningful look through the crowd he hunched his shoulders and slouched off towards the bar instead. It only took a drink and a half for the man to spot him again, still nowhere near the dance floor. 

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Charles said as he settled on the barstool next to him, close enough to be heard over the classical music and crowd noise, and signalled to the bartender. “Small brandy.”

“I’m not going to dance,” Nathan grumbled into his drink. 

“Why not? You know how. I, ah, know for a fact that your final rating after those dance lessons I arranged for you was ‘quite satisfactory.”

Nathan’s mouth twitched, but didn’t progress far enough to break his scowl. “That was different. There weren’t all these fucking people there.”

The bartender slid the brandy across the bar a little too hard before hurrying on to the next drink, but Charles caught it just before it whizzed off the other side. “Ignore them. They’re not going to make any negative comments about your dancing. Look at the others” 

He sipped at his drink, then gestured toward the dance floor where Toki was yaking up booze and stomach acid into some woman’s cleavage, Murderface had just kicked the heel off someone’s stiletto with a misplaced boot and caused a minor domino effect, and Skwisgaar was dancing inappropriately close to an overweight octogenarian. Pickles, who even while wasted had impeccable rhythm (but not so much hand-eye-foot-pants coordination), had been in the fray until recently but was now taking a nap across a row of chairs along the wall. 

“And if they do,” Charles continued mildly, “there are things we can do about that.”

That made Nathan perk up a little. “Yeah?”

Charles offered a small, conspiratorial smile that Nathan only knew to recognize from knowing the guy for so many years. “I have a sniper on speed dial.”

“Brutal,” Nathan said with an approving nod. Then he remembered that the worst part of being a bull in a china shop was the moment of getting yelled at and humiliated in front of everybody, not the stuff that was happening by the time a bullet could be fired, and looked down moodily into the depths of his beer again. Why couldn’t this party just have a fucking mosh pit and leave it at that? “Still not doing it though.”

“I see.” Charles gave it a moment, then leaned closer as though trying to see what Nathan was looking at in there. “You know. If you were to hit the dance floor I would be, ah, more than willing to redress you for the trouble. In the, ah, restroom. Afterwards”

“Hey,” he huffed, “I can dress myself, I’m not a fucking baby. And earlier you _said_ this suit was fine!”

His manager just watched him expectantly. 

At first Nathan just scowled in return, then mentally went back over what Charles had just said to see if he’d missed anything. After a moment, his eyes widened. “Ooooh!” He stood up hastily from his barstool, knocking back the rest of his drink and putting the glass down with more force than was strictly necessary. “Well,” he said, still trying to sound and look annoyed for the sake of subterfuge, “I guess I’d better go dance then!”

“Yes, I’d expect you’d better,” Charles replied, a gleam in his eye. 

The guy loved shit like this, Nathan realized as he made his way towards the dance floor. The whole playacting thing—letting the tension rise and rise until _bam_ , ten or twenty minutes from now they’d be fucking like there was no tomorrow in a locked bathroom. 

And Charles was so cool that no one looking at him would ever know, but meanwhile _he_ was watching Nathan who, unfortunately, was a lot better at ‘blunt’ than ‘cool’ and found a dance partner by walking up to some woman and blurting out “Hey, dance with me” while sporting a budding hard-on. It had nothing to do with her, but _she_ didn’t know that and spent the entire song (a slow one unfortunately) pressed up closer than the dance lessons had led Nathan to expect. 

By the time the song ended he had to shoo her away with increasingly insulting excuses that eventually built up to “Get lost, dogface!” and she grabbed the nearest drink she could find and threw it in his face. Which at least gave him an excuse to beeline for the bathroom. 

As soon as the door shut behind him Nathan heard the lock click and glanced over his shoulder at Charles, who had clearly been waiting. “Hey. Uh, I gotta wash my face real quick first.”

“I saw,” Charles said mildly, sidling up behind him as he bent over the sink. “You danced very well out there, by the way. I didn’t notice anyone pointing or laughing.” He ran a hand over the seat of Nathan’s suit pants and gave a lingering pat. “Really, ah, showed yourself to advantage.”

Nathan splashed water on his face and turned the tap off, fuck grabbing a paper towel—if water got on his suit, he had a built-in excuse for being damp. He straightened and turned so quickly that he brushed against Charles’ own confined erection and, swearing under his breath, yanked the other man by the tie into a kiss. And when he tugged down on the tie and released, Charles slid obligingly down, taking Nathan’s zipper with him in the same motion, freeing his cock and and diving in more swiftly than should have been _fucking legal_. Nathan rested a hand on Charles’ head, fingers twitching and clenching in a show of control even though they both knew beyond a doubt that Charles was the one in control here; Nathan’s other hand gripped desperately at the sink, because surely any second every bone in his body would be sucked expertly out through his dick. 

Fuck, as soon as this was over he was going to go right back out on that dance floor, too. Do this all over again, and again, and again, in order to have Charles wrapped around him just like this all night. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Nathan Explosion soon earned the reputation as the best and most enthusiastic ballroom dancer in Dethklok by a _mile_.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short fic but instead it turned into 2k+ words because I didn't know how to end it. So I hope you're satisfied with the fact that it ends on a hotdog/penis joke, because I am (I think).


End file.
